traveled, yet always remembered in the Danish summer”—the
enthusiasm of my youth; the mighty trumpet of my awakening;
the desired object of my feelings; the confidant of my
beginnings; my lost friend; my sadly missed reader,
this work is dedicated.In the final version Kierkegaard omitted the lines from “the enthusiasm of
my youth” through “my sadly missed reader” and replaced them with “the
object of my admiration, my loss,” but no one can doubt his devotion to
Møller, who, apart from his father, was the only person he ever mentioned
by name in dedicating one of his works. And on a later occasion Kierke-
gaard again praised Møller heartily and without affectation: “For who has
been enamored of P. M. and forgotten his humor? Who has admired him
and forgotten his wholesomeness? Who has known him and forgotten his
laughter, which did you good even when you were not quite sure what he
was laughing at—for his absentmindedness was occasionally a source of
confusion.”
Kierkegaard became acquainted with Møller in 1831 after the latter re-
turned from Norway and began his philosophy lectures in Copenhagen. In
the ensuing years Kierkegaard sat in the hall when Møller lectured on Greek
moral philosophy, on the general principles of metaphysics, and on Aristot-
le’sOn the Soul, but apart from a few instances—a “very interesting conver-
sation” in the latter part of June 1837 about the relation of Socratic irony
to Christian humor; Møller’s good-humored invitation that Kierkegaard
meet him at Pleisch’s after a dissertation defense; and the remark just cited
about Møller’s laughter—the entirety of the evidence of theirpersonalrela-
tionshi pamounts to little more than what Kierkegaard summarized in a
journal entry from 1854: “I recall the words of the dying Poul Møller,
which he often related to me when he was alive, and which, if my memory
is not mistaken,... he enjoined Sibbern to repeat to me again and again:
‘You are so polemical through and through, that it is quite frightful.’ ” In
a marginal note he appended to this remark, Kierkegaard expressed doubt
as to whether it was in fact on his deathbed that Møller had uttered the
words about being polemical. But Kierkegaardwasquite certain that it was
on his deathbed that Møller had asked Sibbern to “tell little Kierkegaard to
be careful not to set himself too ambitious a plan of study, because doing
so has caused me much harm.” If Sibbern conveyed Møller’s wishes, it does
not seem to have done much good, because Kierkegaard’s “plan of study”
was so all-encompassing it could scarcely be called a plan. With its extraor-
dinary complexity, Kierkegaard’s plan was the basis for producing the works